204 Rosewood Lane - Debbie Macomber [35]
Grace remembered asking Dan about the shirt, remembered him telling her it was his favorite, but she’d never seen him wear it. After a while, it had completely slipped her mind.
Another box revealed a second ugly surprise. Kelly had given Dan a highly touted book on World War II for his birthday. He’d thanked her profusely and said he’d read it. But he hadn’t. Instead it, too, had been destroyed, the pages ripped from the binding. Grace discovered two more boxes of his carnage. It was as though he’d planted them there for her to find. Dan couldn’t have shouted his hate more loudly had he been standing directly in front of her.
Shaken to the core, Grace discarded the boxes in the garbage and sat down on the back porch steps. Her first reaction was anger. How dare he do such a thing. How dare he! Then she felt the overwhelming urge to weep. Tears stung her eyes, but she refused to give in to them. She refused to hand her husband the power to reduce her to a sniveling, spineless weakling.
Buttercup joined her and seemed to sense Grace’s distress.
“What would make him do this?” she asked her golden retriever.
Buttercup looked up at her with big, soulful eyes.
“I don’t know either, girl. I just don’t know.” Needing to hold someone, Grace put her arms around the dog’s neck and buried her face in Buttercup’s fur.
She wasn’t sure how long she sat there, feeling intense anger, regret and simmering emotion. After a while she got to her feet. The garage door wasn’t going to fix itself.
In the process of digging through the neat stack of boxes, she eventually happened upon the manual. She flipped through it and quickly read over the information. The book offered suggestions for troubleshooting, which she studied in detail. Again and again she reminded herself that she could handle this.
She’d just positioned the stepladder when a pickup truck pulled into the driveway. Grace recognized Cliff and hesitated, her feet on the fourth rung up.
“Hi,” he called, climbing out of the truck. Buttercup trotted over to greet him. While friendly, the golden retriever was protective of Grace and wasn’t keen on letting strangers into the yard. To Grace’s surprise, Buttercup greeted Cliff as if he were family.
“Hi,” she said, wishing now that she’d worn a newer pair of jeans and a less faded sweatshirt.
“Charlotte mentioned that you had a problem with your garage door,” he said, bending down to scratch her dog’s ears.
Grace blinked, unsure how Olivia’s mother had known about her problem, but then Charlotte always did have a way of finding out things.
Cliff straightened and seemed to await her invitation. “I came to see if I could give you a hand.”
At this point, Grace wasn’t about to refuse help. “I’d be grateful if you’d look at it. I’ve been reading the manual but I haven’t had a chance to check out the mechanism yet.”
“I have a knack for stuff like this.” He glanced around. “I’m gifted at cleaning leaves out of rain gutters, too.”
Grace laughed. “You must be an angel in disguise.”
“I don’t think so.” He helped her down from the ladder and even before Grace could get inside the house to brew a pot of coffee, he had the garage door working again.
“What was wrong?” she asked, astonished that it had been so easy.
“The wheels jumped out of alignment. I just put it back on track. Nothing to it.”
While Cliff carried the ladder over to the house, Grace reached for the rake and started gathering together a huge pile of oak leaves. When she’d finished, Cliff helped her pack them inside plastic bags.
“Are you ready for that coffee?” she asked, when they’d tied the last bag.
“That’d be great.”
She welcomed him into her kitchen and set out two big mugs. “I don’t know how to thank you.”
He studied her a moment, then grinned boyishly. “I’ll think of something,” he teased.
“I’ll bet you will.” Grace laughed—and suddenly realized that just a couple of hours earlier, she’d been fighting back tears. The